Load McAfee Network Security Manager data in Python using dltHub

Build a McAfee Network Security Manager-to-database or-dataframe pipeline in Python using dlt with automatic Cursor support.

In this guide, we'll set up a complete McAfee Network Security Manager data pipeline from API credentials to your first data load in just 10 minutes. You'll end up with a fully declarative Python pipeline based on dlt's REST API connector, like in the partial example code below:

Example code
@dlt.source
def mcafee_network_security_manager_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://<nsm_ip>/sdkapi/",
            "auth": {
                "type": "custom",
                "header_name": "NSM-SDK-API",
                "header_value": base64_encoded_credentials,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            domain/sslconfiguration/exportresigncert, heartbeat
        ],
    }
    [...]
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    # Connect to destination
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name='mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline',
        destination='duckdb',
        dataset_name='mcafee_network_security_manager_data', 
    )
    # Load the data
    load_info = pipeline.run(mcafee_network_security_manager_source())
    print(load_info)

Why use dltHub Workspace with LLM Context to generate Python pipelines?

  • Accelerate pipeline development with AI-native context
  • Debug pipelines, validate schemas and data with the integrated Pipeline Dashboard
  • Build Python notebooks for end users of your data
  • Low maintenance thanks to Schema evolution with type inference, resilience and self documenting REST API connectors. A shallow learning curve makes the pipeline easy to extend by any team member
  • dlt is the tool of choice for Pythonic Iceberg Lakehouses, bringing mature data loading to pythonic Iceberg with or without catalogs

What you’ll do

We’ll show you how to generate a readable and easily maintainable Python script that fetches data from mcafee_network_security_manager’s API and loads it into Iceberg, DataFrames, files, or a database of your choice. Here are some of the endpoints you can load:

  • Domain Management: Create, read, update, and manage domain configurations and SSL certificates
  • Policy Import: Import firewall, IPS recon, and malware policies into domains
  • SSL Configuration: Export and resign certificates, manage SSL keys and configurations
  • Sensor Actions: Execute actions on sensors including SSL key management
  • Health Monitoring: Heartbeat endpoint for system availability and status checks

You will then debug the McAfee Network Security Manager pipeline using our Pipeline Dashboard tool to ensure it is copying the data correctly, before building a Notebook to explore your data and build reports.

Setup & steps to follow

💡
Before getting started, let's make sure Cursor is set up correctly:

Now you're ready to get started!

  1. ⚙️ Set up dlt Workspace

    Install dlt with duckdb support:

    pip install dlt[workspace]

    Initialize a dlt pipeline with McAfee Network Security Manager support.

    dlt init dlthub:mcafee_network_security_manager duckdb

    The init command will setup the necessary files and folders for the next step.

  2. 🤠 Start LLM-assisted coding

    Here’s a prompt to get you started:

    Prompt
    Please generate a REST API Source for McAfee Network Security Manager API, as specified in @mcafee_network_security_manager-docs.yaml 
Start with endpoint(s) domain/sslconfiguration/exportresigncert and heartbeat and skip incremental loading for now. 
Place the code in mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline.py and name the pipeline mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline. 
If the file exists, use it as a starting point. 
Do not add or modify any other files. 
Use @dlt rest api as a tutorial. 
After adding the endpoints, allow the user to run the pipeline with python mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline.py and await further instructions.

  3. 🔒 Set up credentials

    Authentication uses a custom NSM-SDK-API header containing a base64-encoded credential string. After initial authentication via the Session resource URL (which returns user ID and session ID), these credentials must be passed in the NSM-SDK-API header for all subsequent resource requests. TLS 1.2 is required for all connections.

Header name: NSM-SDK-API Example value format: base64-encoded string (e.g., QUJDM0FDOUFCMzlFRTMyMkMyNjFCNzMzMjcyRkM0OUY6MQ==) Initial authentication: POST to Session resource URL to obtain user ID and session ID Subsequent requests: Include NSM-SDK-API header with credentials for validation and authorization Protocol requirement: TLS 1.2 only

To get the appropriate API keys, please visit the original source at docs.trellix.com.
If you want to protect your environment secrets in a production environment, look into [setting up credentials with dlt](https://dlthub.com/docs/walkthroughs/add_credentials).

4. 🏃‍♀️ Run the pipeline in the Python terminal in Cursor

```shell
python mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline.py
```

If your pipeline runs correctly, you’ll see something like the following:

```shell
Pipeline mcafee_network_security_manager load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset mcafee_network_security_manager_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/mcafee_network_security_manager.duckdb location to store data
Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs
```

5. 📈 Debug your pipeline and data with the Pipeline Dashboard

Now that you have a running pipeline, you need to make sure it’s correct, so you do not introduce silent failures like misconfigured pagination or incremental loading errors. By launching the dlt Workspace Pipeline Dashboard, you can see various information about the pipeline to enable you to test it. Here you can see:
- Pipeline overview: State, load metrics
- Data’s schema: tables, columns, types, hints
- You can query the data itself

```shell
dlt pipeline mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline show 
```

6. 🐍 Build a Notebook with data explorations and reports

With the pipeline and data partially validated, you can continue with custom data explorations and reports. To get started, paste the snippet below into a new marimo Notebook and ask your LLM to go from there. Jupyter Notebooks and regular Python scripts are supported as well.


```python
import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("mcafee_network_security_manager_pipeline").dataset()

get ["domain/sslconfiguration/exportresigncert"] table as Pandas frame

data.["domain/sslconfiguration/exportresigncert"].df().head() ```

Extra resources:

Next steps